Home » French » Grammar » Gender

• Logical Gender
• Gender from Meaning
• Sacred Gender Rule
• - Part I Masculine
• - Part II Masculine
• - Part I Feminine
• - Part I Feminine (b)
• - Part II Feminine
• Homologues
• Trial By Fire

The Sacred Gender Rule

I. Expect all nouns to be masculine unless they end in mute e. II.Except for the following endings which to a large degree are masculine  (despite ending in mute e ) -ge ending nouns,  -le ending nouns that, don't end in -ole, -ale, -ule, and  -lle, -me ending nouns -re ending nouns and the following, which to a large degree are feminine (even though they don't end in mute e ) -on ending nouns -é ending nouns -eur ending nouns

Part I, expect all nouns to be masculine unless they end in mute e, by itself has too many exceptions to be of much value.  But when you integrate (from part 2), the major exceptions to part I, you get a fairly effective guide for determining gender.  There are still plenty of exceptions to both part I and part II however by learning these exceptions and  internalizing the rule you can effectively master French noun gender. In the next couple of pages, I included some examples of nouns that follow the rule as well as the exceptions. Because I included all of the most important exceptions but only a sampling of words that follow the rule, you might get the impression that the Sacred Gender rule is no good. Don't be fooled.

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